NASA to Offer Student Education Opportunity March 16

KidsFirst is pleased to announce that the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center will provide a student education opportunity on Saturday, March 16 from 9:30 am – 4:00pm. The event will take place at the Shelby County Instructional School on Highway 31 in Alabaster.

NASA’s BEST Students (Beginning Engineering, Science, and Technology) is a collection of activities designed to teach students the Engineering Design Process (EDP) through problem-based, hands-on activities. More information can be found here on the NASA web site.

The EDP is a series of 6 steps (ask, imagine, plan, create, experiment, improve) that engineers use to guide them as they solve problems. What makes NASA’s BEST activities different than many others is that there is no recipe for building the items in each activity and there are no given drawings. The emphasis is for students to understand that engineers must imagine and plan before they begin to build and experiment. Additionally, the students truly enjoy improving upon their model after their initial experiment.

The NASA team will offer professional development for the KidsFirst educators in the morning. The educators will then have the opportunity to practice their newly obtained knowledge by bringing these exciting resources to the students of KidsFirst that afternoon. NASA education specialists will be on hand to support the implementation with the students.